Potterologist

I don't know an awful lot about Scottish football. But I know an awful lot about football. In every country where there are 2-4 dominant teams with big stadiums, good sponsorship, annual Champions League/Europa League money, these teams also build state of the art academies producing top players every year. The league most similar to Scotland is the Portuguese league. Three teams have dominated forever and had the time and room for a permanent oligpoly to take shape - same thing could be said for Celtic & Rangers (who may be the second worst club in the world). The difference is in Portugal they did something useful with that domination. Portugal got 2x the population of Scotland, yet they always have ca 200 players in the top 5 leagues while Scotland generally have ~35. Similar things could be said for Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands etc... all of them pump out players, through great acadamies as well as modern scouting. All of the produce a lot more talent per capita. Scotland should have at least 75-100 players in the top 5 league as well as some reasonably competitive teams in the CL/EL. The clubs needing to lead the way for Scotland are antique. Any time I tune into a Glasgow derby I get shocked by how clubs with these resources are just filled with dross who are at best going to play in some bottom half PL team at their peak. Both player development and scouting is clearly on a very low level and has been for twenty years or so, when the football world moved on and your giants didn't. This is a football thought I have had for a long time, and just taking the opportunity to get it off my chest... I think a somewhat football mad country like Scotland just deserve better. On the bright side of everything, mr Tony Bloom has entered the chat and I think he will have a massive impact on the entirety of Scottish football.

Possible - I personally know very little about Scottish football. But Peter Leven was the one the agent meant. No idea what the players think of the Robinson guy but I can ask next time we speak.

Yes, this is referring to Leven. Left some dull parts of the larger context out and didnt realise it became a bit vague. We did not talk about the latest beyond "they brought in a new one now, maybe things get better."

Spoke to the agent of one of the Scandinavian players and came here to tell a quote you might find interesting: "Jimmy was the scapegoat. The players, not only [his client], felt they had let the manager down. After that title they won and all the European travelling... they were tired. Only weeks before Jimmy was sacked, [client] said he was worried about it because any energy they had left they got from him. He knew that players who aren't used to winning titles and going to Europe are hard to energise and he did what he could. The players knew it. The new guy is an angry one. The players can't breathe. They need support and motivation, not blame and worries. [The client] is fine, managers come and go at most clubs and he has seen too much of it to really care, but he thinks they are in trouble as a team. You know that when players and staff no longer speaks in terms of "difficult" but only terms of "bad"."